Archive for May 2010

Water privatisation in India today comes in a wide range of what are called “solutions” by the votaries of public-private partnerships. There is water-related engineering and construction (such as earth-moving activities, alteration of river courses, artificial linking of rivers, building of dams and pipelines, etc), water and wastewater services, and water treatment, which affect both nature and communities. What remains outside the ambit of “solutions” – only until the victims can be persuaded to pay – are the impacts of the micro-scale geoengineering. Every impact damages people and the environment. Impacts can be categorised as: ecological (effects on natural ecosystems), social (related to rights of human beings and communities, health, cultural norms, attitudes, belief systems), economic (affecting livelihoods, well-being, and access to basic services) and even legal and institutional.

We are now seeing increasing pressure for private sector development in India – and the rest of Asia-Pacific. Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, an independent research unit concerned with water in India (they are based in Madhya Pradesh) says that this pressure is being mounted mainly by two influential international financial institutions: the World Bank and its regional partner, the Asian Development Bank. The World Bank gives funds, advice, training and technical assistance to governments and the private sector to implement privatisation.

Four entities allow the World Bank to undertake various functions. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) lends directly to the private sector and can even purchase equity in private companies. The Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) seeks to improve the quality of infrastructure through private participation. The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) insures the private sector against commercial and political risk. The International Court for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) takes charge of disputes between investors and states. The Bank also has some other mechanisms that promote its activities in India including Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), Water and Sanitation for Urban Poor (WSUP), Water for Asian Cities (WAC) and others. The World Bank’s funding partners include the JBIC, AusAid, GTZ, USAID, DFID, UN-Habitat and the ADB.

More growth in large cities and towns, and urbanisation becoming a dominant land use pattern in more districts of India mean that the industrial, residential and municipal demands for water are rising quickly. India’s Central Pollution Control Board (an agency of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India) has released its ‘Observation on trend of Water Supply, Wastewater Generation in Cities and Towns’. Here are its main comments and highlights. I’ve left the language as it is – the import is what counts.

From The Economist's special report on water, 22 May 2010: Global water sources

“In decade of 90’s the growth of cities is observed is 33% while the growth of the decade in beginning of millennium is slowed down. Metropolitan cities is increased from 3 to 6 Nos. from 80’s to 2008. Class-I cities increase from 37 to 53 Nos. Class-II towns increase from 22 to 35. This trend indicates that all type of cities has grown in the decade of 90’s.”

Findings and Recommendations

Since the cities are growing, the population is enhanced from 30 million to 48 million.

Consequently water supply has been increased approximately twice in magnitude from 4,970 MLD (million litres per day) to 8,782 MLD.

Sewage generation has risen 38%.

Comparing the data of decades of 90’s to 2008, it is indicated that coastal cities and towns are not growing significantly.

Treatment capacity of sewage in comparison to decade of 80’s to until now has increased almost double (93%).

There are 498 Class-I Cities having population of 257 million and 410 Class-II Towns having population in India.

Total water supply including all class-I cities and class-II town in India is 48,093.88 MLD.

The CPCB says that wastewater generation from all class I cities and class II towns is 38,254 MLD whereas the installed treatment capacity is 11,787 MLD, which means that no more than a maximum of 31% of total sewage generated can be treated. (If the question is ‘where does the rest go?’, the CPCB answers that too in its report.) “This evidently indicates ominous position of sewage treatment, which is the main source of pollution of rivers and lakes,” warns the CPCB report. “To improve the water quality of rivers and lakes, there is an urgent need to increase sewage treatment capacity and its optimum utilisation.”

The CPCB, which thankfully still has a reputation for straight talking, has advised India’s municipalities and town administrations to “set up a very thoughtful action plan to fill this gap in a minimum time frame”. The CPCB has suggested that large cities in which and from which the pollution problem is more severe, cities/towns whose effluents and sewage are polluting rivers and water bodies “will be required to be taken up on priority basis in first phase”. Why is the CPCB so insistent? Quite simply, it says there is an “urgency of preventing pollution of our water bodies and preserving our precious water resources”.

But even in the India of non-city and non-town landscapes, there are plans being hatched by the would-be water merchants. An indication of the mischief afoot comes from a report righteously entitled ‘Pro-Poor Financial Services for Rural Water: Linking the Water Sector to Rural Finance’. (If so many good deeds are ‘pro-poor’ nowadays how come the ranks of the do-gooders is only increasing?) Here is what it says: “Previous studies suggest that a considerable demand for pro-poor financial services for water in rural areas remains unmet. The number of potential microfinance clients in rural areas for investments in water supply is estimated to be 5.0 million in East/Southeast Asia, 10.3 million in South Asia, and 3.1 million in sub-Saharan Africa.” Those three numbers get to the heart of the matter.

The report continues: “Concerning microloans for rural sanitation, there are 17 million potential clients in East/ Southeast Asia, 30.8 million in South Asia, and 4.4 million in sub-Saharan Africa. In total, the potential demand for micro-loans in these three regions is estimated at US $ 1.5 billion in the case of rural water supply, and US $ 5 billion in the case of rural sanitation. The challenge is how to unlock this latent demand and turn it into an effective process.” The authors make no bones about it, the riches at the bottom of the water table is what they’re after. And who are the authors? The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (well-known as GTZ in Asia, and which I was surprised to learn is a GmbH), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and of course the World Bank.

Cover of The Economist's special report on water, 22 May 2010

The water merchants have their cheerleading squad in place in the form of a pliant media, and The Economist has obliged by bringing out one of its typically characterless ‘surveys’, as it likes to call them. It is a special report on water (the 22 May 2010 issue) and the subject is dealt with in the sycophantic manner that the weekly reserves for the captains of industry. “Yet even if it takes two litres of groundwater to produce a litre of bottled water, companies like CocaCola and PepsiCo are hardly significant users compared with farmers and even many industrial producers.” (Hear, hear, who needs those pesky farmers anyway?) “PepsiCo has nevertheless become the first big company to declare its support for the human right to water. For its part, CocaCola is one of a consortium of companies that in 2008 formed the 2030 Water Resources Group, which strives to deal with the issue of water scarcity. Last year it commissioned a consultancy, McKinsey, to produce a report on the economics of a range of solutions.” This transatlantic weekly, once upon a time British, puts in a word for big dams too: “Dams and reservoirs certainly need constant repairs and careful maintenance and do not always get them, usually because the necessary institutions are not in place.”

Who are operating as water merchants and what do they want? There are several North American / West European companies now in India: Ondeo-Degrement, Veolia Environnement, Saur of France, RWE/Thames Water of Germany and the UK Bechtel, Enron (US), Compagnie Generale des Eaux (CGE). Indian companies are going to either compete with them, or join them – Tata subsidiary Jamshedpur Utilities and Services Company (JUSCO), IVRCL Infrastructures and Projects, Mahindra Infrastructure Ltd., IL&FS.

Surat, Gujarat: Fishing boats near the mouth of the Tapi river

The foreign multinationals are involved in several projects across the country. Compagnie Generale des Eaux (CGE) is operating urban water supply project in Hubli-Dharwad in Karnataka. Veolia is operating water and wastewater plant in Nagpur in Maharashtra and it has also formed a joint venture with JUSCO. Ondeo-Degremont has won contracts to construct water treatment plants in Mumbai and Chennai and it is also operating a wastewater treatment plant in Delhi. Thames Water was involved in a leak reduction project in Bangalore while United Utilities and Bechtel are partners in the Tiruppur project. JUSCO has projects in Jamshedpur, Bhopal, Kolkata and Adityapur. IVRCL is working on a wastewater treatment project in Alandur, desalination in Chennai and solid waste management in Tiruppur. IL&FS is involved in various projects in Haldia, Tiruppur, Vishakhapatnam and municipal waste processing facilities in Delhi and Ajmer, Rajasthan.

The CPCB has outlined the water, sewage and pollution tasks for cities, but its worries are going to be transformed into “a challenge to unlock latent demand” by the multilateral lending organisations on the one hand and the global water merchants (together with their Indian partners). Already deficit in terms of civic infrastructure and struggling with yawning gaps in the provision of healthcare and education, India’s towns and small cities will pass the burden of water profiteering on to those who can’t afford it. They leave the rural districts to earn a living in the cities, when their water rupee gets squeezed down to the last drop, where will they go then?

This is to be a monthly posting from now on. It will for a start draw on three main sources of global analysis: the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Grains Council, and the US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. Extracts from the three major sources run below, but this is to be placed in global context by the food production and supply situation in two of our neighbours in South Asia, Nepal and Afghanistan. There is hunger and displacement in Pakistan and Sri Lanka too, and I’ll update this posting with relevant reports. Also contrast the global views with the announcement from the US Department of Agriculture, which comes at the end of the list of extracts.

[1] “Nominal prices, in US dollar terms, of staple food commodities, mainly rice and wheat, have generally declined from the 2008 peak but remain significantly above their pre-2008 food-crisis levels in several countries. The price impact on overall food consumption of the vulnerable population is still expected to be substantial. Prices of rice have been increasing in India since the second half of 2008 and currently are above their levels of a year ago 5 percent in Chennai to 42 percent in Patna.”
“Retail prices of rice have also been rising since late 2009 in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Pakistan and Myanmar. In exporting countries such as Thailand and Viet Nam, rice prices (in local currencies) have declined since January 2010 due to strong international demand. Prices of wheat in India and Pakistan have also been rising steadily since October 2008. Recent increases are attributed to concerns over the unfavourable harvests of the current 2010 Rabi season. In Afghanistan, prices of wheat have been coming down since the 2009 bumper harvest in the country.” From FAO Crop Prospects and Food Situation May 2010

[2] “The forecast of world wheat production is increased by 2m. tons, to 660m. (676m.). World wheat consumption is forecast to grow by 1%, to a record 654m. tons, unchanged from last month. The forecast of global stocks is raised by 2m. tons, to a nine-year high of 201m. (195m.), with much of the increase in China and India.”
“World rice production in 2009/10 is estimated to decline for the first time in seven years, by 1%, to 442m. tons, mostly reflecting a reduced main crop in India. At 442m. tons, rice consumption will expand by 1%, in line with the global population trend. Inventories in China are expected to rise, but those in India and the five leading exporters are forecast to decrease. World trade in calendar 2010 is projected to recover by 5%, to 29.9m. tons, underpinned by larger shipments to Far East Asian markets.” From International Grains Council Grain Market Report 2010 May

FAO rice retail prices

[3] “Global wheat supplies for 2010/11 are projected 2 percent higher with larger year-to-year beginning stocks more than offsetting lower expected production. Global 2010/11 wheat production is projected at 672.2 million tons, down 1 percent from 2009/10 and the third largest production on record if realized. Larger projected production in EU-27, South America, and the Middle East is more than offset by expected declines in FSU-12, North Africa, South Asia, China, Canada, and Australia.”
“Global coarse grain production for 2010/11 is projected at a record 1,129.8 million tons, up 2 percent from 2009/10. Most of the 27.4-million-ton increase in coarse grains production results from higher projected foreign corn production, up 19.9 million tons from 2009/10. Higher expected foreign corn area and rising yields combine with higher U.S. area to boost global corn production to a record 835.0 million tons, up 26.5 million from 2009/10. Corn production is projected higher year-to-year for China, Mexico, India, Russia, EU-27, Ukraine, and Canada.”
“Global 2010/11 rice production is projected at a record 459.7 million tons, up 17.6 million or 4 percent from 2009/10. World disappearance (consumption and residual) is projected at a record 453.4 million tons, up 10.9 million or 2 percent. Large crops are projected for most of Asia including record or near-record crops in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Additionally, large crops are forecast for the U.S., EU-27, and Nigeria.” From US Department of Agriculture, World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, 11 May 2010

In Nepal, food supplies are running low in the western hills.An IRIN report from Kathmandu (21 May 2010) says: “Food security for more than 600,000 people in the western hills of Nepal is set to deteriorate, aid agencies warn. With already low agricultural production in the more food-insecure areas, inflation is exacerbating matters further. “A lot of villagers are opting for more desperate coping mechanisms,” Richard Ragan, country representative for the World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN in Kathmandu. Many villagers are already reducing the number of meals they eat each day, cutting portions, or migrating to urban areas or India for work, he said. ‘In a desperate attempt to buy food, families are even selling their livestock and household assets and the out-migration [to Nepali cities and India] has increased already by 40 percent,’ Ragan said.”

Gulmohur trees in bloom, May in Maharashtra

In Afghanistan, farmers face a tough choice: wheat, fruit or saffron?An IRIN report from Kabul (20 May 2010) says: “Pointing to his flourishing wheat field in the western Afghan province of Herat, Abdullah says he regrets cultivating the crop. Wheat is very cheap,” he told IRIN, adding that he would hardly make 50,000 Afghanis (about US$1,050) from his two hectares. “I won’t be able to feed my family properly with this income.” Several farmers contacted by IRIN in Helmand, Kandahar and Balkh provinces had similar sentiments. Wheat is considered a strategic crop and a staple food, but imports are always required, even when there is a bumper harvest. About seven million (over 24 percent of the country’s estimated 27 million population) are food-insecure and many others are highly vulnerable to food price fluctuations, according to aid agencies.”

The trade surplus in agriculture is now forecast to reach $28 billion, the second highest ever achieved.

The report comes on the heels of an historic six-month pace by U.S. agricultural exports, which shattered records with $59 billion in sales in the first half of the fiscal year and generated a 14 percent increase over the same period last year.

U.S. agricultural exports to China grew by nearly $3 billion during the first half of the fiscal year to $10.6 billion, making China the United States’ top market for this period. In total, exports to Asia have reached record highs, led by strong increases in China and Southeast Asia. Other outstanding country and regional customers include the European Union, Turkey, and North Africa.”

Temperature anomalies for April 2010 are shown on the dot maps below. The dot map on the left provides a spatial representation of anomalies calculated from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) dataset of land surface stations using a 1961–1990 base period. Image from State of the Climate, Global Analysis, April 2010, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Climatic Data Center

The signals in 2010 have been loud and clear and very very worrying.

I’ve taken these graphs and images from (1) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Climatic Data Center and (2) the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme climate change index. Together they present the very worrying picture about climate in 2010.

For the first four months of 2010, I’ve taken two of the several salient observations made by NOAA-NCDC for each month. Here they are:

January
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). This is the fourth warmest January on record.
* The global land surface temperature for January 2010 was 0.83°C (1.49°F) above the 20th century average of 2.8°C (37.0°F). Land areas in the Southern Hemisphere were the warmest on record for January.

February
* In the Southern Hemisphere, both the February 2010 average temperature for land areas and the Hemisphere as a whole (land and ocean surface combined), represented the warmest February on record. The Southern Hemisphere ocean temperature tied with 1998 as the warmest February on record.
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for December 2009 – February 2010 was the fifth warmest on record for the season, 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 12.1°C (53.8°F).

March
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for March 2010 was the warmest on record at 13.5°C (56.3°F), which is 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F). This was also the 34th consecutive March with global land and ocean temperatures above the 20th century average.
* The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20th century average of 15.9°C (60.7°F) and the warmest March on record.

From the climate change index of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) of the International Council for Science

April
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for April 2010 was the warmest on record at 14.5°C (58.1°F), which is 0.76°C (1.37°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F). This was also the 34th consecutive April with global land and ocean temperatures above the 20th century average.
* The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 16.0°C (60.9°F) and the warmest April on record. The warmth was most pronounced in the equatorial portions of the major oceans, especially the Atlantic.

What’s a lot worse is the bland monsoon forecasts by the Indian Meteorological Department, which as an institute appears to pay little attention to the global forces shaping our subcontinental climate.

Land temperature anomalies. From State of the Climate, Global Analysis, April 2010, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Climatic Data Center.

Take this announcement: “The 2010 monsoon is running ahead of schedule, as the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has said rain was recorded in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands before its normal arrival at this first landmark on the south-west monsoon’s progression across the sub-continent. Rainfall is likely to be 98% of the long-term average said the IMD. “Rainfall for the country as a whole is is likely to be normal,” said an IMD spokesperson and qualified this forecast by noting that the model has an error margin of 5%.”

They made a very similar pre-monsoon announcement in 2009, and by early July, when it was obvious to all that the rains were going to fall way under the seasonal average, the IMD amended its forecast. They’ve been talking about delivering district-level forecasts to farmers for the monsoon in 2010. When they won’t look macro, how on earth are they going to understand micro?

CPI for Agricultural Labour data from 2007-10 March and FAO food index data over the same period

My working experience with a central agriculture ministry programme (the NAIP – National Agricultural Innovation Project) has left me with some impressions of the perspective of the central institutional approach to agriculture, and these aren’t encouraging. My finding is (although I have little access to academic output on agriculture which is not crop science):

1. We in India lack an independent food retail price gathering and monitoring network. The data gathered by the Ministry of Agriculture (through its Directorate of Economics and Statistics) and by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution use different formats and schedules. Validating these is a huge task, and that is the reason why the unit level (place, food item, time) extraction becomes so very cumbersome.

2. We have even less knowledge (outside the commercial circuit) of the flows of agricultural produce: (a) From mandis to urban centres. Large transfers of foodgrains are logged by Indian Railways, but at district level, we have very little reliable data of the flows of cereals, pulses, vegetables and fruit, within district centres and outside; (b) From mandis (and contract farms, now strengthened by a draft national agriculture produce marketing committee act, APMC) to the food processing industry, and to commercial storage depots for use by either food processing sector and by the agri commodities exchanges.

3. Agriculture continues to be seen by central and state governments mainly as an APY (area, production, yield) activity, only rarely as a livelihood activity for a rural household (institutes such as Crida buck this trend, but we need more of them). That is why our organised state-level assessments are also still APY-centric (with a few scattered instances of enlightenment in the form of recognition of conservation agriculture). This is frustrating at a systemic level, because for example the Planning Commission has at hand any number of NGO and commissioned studies and assessments that place cultivation as a socio-cultural livelihood activity.

I’d say there that are technology answers to points 1 and 2 (see how commercial ventures like Nokia Lifetools, Reuters Market Light, Hariyali Kisan Bazar have used tech) but point 3 needs a lot of work.

This chart that I’ve made shows why. It uses the consumer price index (CPI) for Agricultural Labour data from 2007-10 March and FAO food index data over the same period. The eight states I’ve chosen (Haryana, Karnataka, Punjab, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh) recorded the highest increases among large states of CPI-AL over the period.

The FAO indices climb steeply till around Feb 2008. By December 2008 the FAO cereal index is back to the level it was at in August 2007. For that time the CPI-AL 8-state rise is relatively gradual and disconnected from the FAO trend. Between around Jan 2009 and July 2009 both FAO indices show some volatility in the 100-125% band. The 8 states’ CPI-AL however continue their rising trend. Only in December 2009 is there evidence of some congruence between the FAO set and the 8 states CPI-AL set, although the FAO pair are 105-120% up from March 2007 and the all-India CPI-AL is more than 135% up.

The big question for us is: what happened with food movements in India between 2007 July and 2008 November, when India and FAO data diverged so dramatically, and then from 2009 May onward, when the movements showed some similarity, although at different levels of the comparative index? Do the agricultural commodities markets hold the answer?

The science of understanding climate change has long given way, among two big Asian governments, to the politics of nationalism. This was evident in December 2009, even through the rubble of the ruined Copenhagen summit on climate change, and it was just as evident months earlier when both India and China, separately, said that they would not subscribe to any form of emission controls that would jeopardise their economic growth trajectories.

That’s the main act, which the countries of the western world like not at all. In the forefront of the finger-wagging western club are the USA accompanied by Britain and Australia (its ready allies), Germany and France (whose moralising manner and hypocritical practice deserve all the scorn they receive and then some) and sundry others from north America and western Europe. They have charged India and China with sabotaging the Copenhagen talks, and their allegations have turned up anew in a tape recording obtained by the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

“Secret recordings obtained by Spiegel reveal how China and India prevented an agreement on tackling climate change at the crucial meeting,” said Der Spiegel. “The powerless Europeans were forced to look on as the agreement failed.” The German magazine, whose editorial instincts are about as sophisticated as the Spice Girls’ taste in clothes, lashed its reportage with large helpings of dime-novel suspense. “A hush came over the room. Even the mobile phones stopped ringing. It was Friday, Dec. 18, 2009, at about 4 p.m. That was the moment when the world leaders meeting in Copenhagen abandoned their efforts to save the world.”

India's GHG emissions 2007, in million tons CO2

Laboured drama apart, Der Spiegel was only repeating instructions given to a supine western media from the ruling cabals in Berlin, Paris, London and of course Washington. Of course. Blame it on those upstart Asians, whose economic growth and global ambitions now threaten western civilisation. It’s a tiresome re-run of how easily development patronage can become scolding xenophobia. But what really happened at Copenhagen (and its entertaining versions) is only the background to a more interesting opera that has swung merrily on, between New Delhi and Beijing, and with unrelated cameos from scientists and economists, two tribes usually disconnected from one another by both design and inclination.

First, the government of India announced with some fanfare a report, ‘India’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2007’ which is the work of the new Indian Network of Climate Change Assessment. Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister for environment and forests, heaped praise on the Network and on India’s climate related ‘achievements’. “More than 80 scientists from 17 institutions across India have contributed to this Assessment,” he said, and added that they did so in “record time” (which is definitely not good from a science point of view).

He went on: “India has become the first ‘non-Annex I’ (developing) country to publish such updated numbers. We will be the first developing country to do so.” (Some Asian one-upmanship there.) “Interestingly, the emissions of USA and China are almost four times that of India in 2007. It is also noteworthy that the emissions intensity of India’s GDP declined by more than 30% during the period 1994-2007, due to the efforts and policies that we are proactively putting in place.” Ramesh went on in such vein, but the report served to underline India’s basic stance on the subject: no, we will not cap or control our emissions based on your standards and recommendations for as long as we are a developing country.

Second, Jairam went to Beijing. There he became very much more the manager rather than the politician, and made a number of plain-speaking statements. “Chinese do not talk as much as Indians, but Chinese perform better, they do much more. I am full of admiration for the way that China just gets to work, whereas [in] India [we] talk and talk and keep on talking,” he was quoted by Xinhua as saying on May 7. Next, he said that India’s Ministry of Home Affairs should not be paranoid about China and take a “much more relaxed” approach to Chinese investments and remove “needless” restrictions. This won him all sorts of applause from the media in China, but provoked instant ripostes from red-faced and bristling Home ministry mandarins in New Delhi.

Ramesh thereby earned the rare distinction of being praised in the lead editorial of the ‘China Daily‘, which together with the Xinhua news agency (Ramesh gave them an interview) sent out the signal to Chinese media that there was a ‘Copenhagen spirit’, South-South teamwork to counter western powers and a sound model to strengthen India-China friendship. “I see climate change as an opportunity to change the political climate between China and India,” Ramesh had told Xinhua. Typically, as soon as Ramesh returned to New Delhi there were furious outbursts and calls for his resignation, which is a distinctly Indian political pastime, the overuse of which recently resulted in Shashi Tharoor being booted out of his ministerial post.

Third, far more serious and quite unnoticed in New Delhi (although Beijing I’m sure has) was the release of what is quickly being called the ‘Hartwell paper‘, a political economy statement on current climate policy of emissions targets, and an effort funded in part by the London School of Economics. The authoring group says that international agreements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions are doomed to failure and must be replaced by a drive towards low-cost green energy. “The bottom line is that there will be little progress in accelerating the decarbonisation of the global economy until low carbon energy supply becomes reliably cheaper and provides reliability of supply,” says the paper. Which effectively means, the successors to the failed Copenhagen summit are doomed, and we should now pay great attention to the Ramesh doctrine of climate change management.

National governments and planning authorities in Dhaka, Islamabad and New Delhi are tending more and more to follow a single ideology – economic growth will drive down poverty – and a primary route to that misplaced objective, which is greater urbanisation. These governments are therefore commissioning a welter of studies and reports, from within and without, to show their citizens why more cities and towns are a good thing (jobs and citizen services, they say) and why mobilising a great deal of money to build infrastructure for these settlements is a good thing (more jobs, more ‘development’).

The cleverer authorities are linking South Asia’s rising urban trendline to a variety of socio-economic goods, such as product and monetary innovation, such as cities being the wellsprings of social entrepreneurship, such as greater tax receipts which will help accumulate funds for social sector spending on the poor and marginalised. For companies and banks that deal with the building of big infrastructure, its engineering, its operation and its financing, this is a persistent swell of good news, and this group is doing everything it can to sustain the urbanisation wave.

The raw numbers are on the side of the powerful urban-centric cabal. Among the world’s cities ranked by average population growth rate per year (in per cent) for 2006-2020, there are 37 South Asian cities (Afghanistan 1, Bangladesh 3, India 25, Pakistan 8) and 8 in China in the top 100. In the next 100, there are 20 cities in China and 11 in India. Asia’s two biggest countries have between them 64 of the top 200 cities that are projected, by the global group of city mayors, to grow the fastest in the next decade. This extraordinary prognosis for the two most populous countries – both of which have become economic powers – has enormous implications for global energy, food and resource flows.

When China and India buy material (as they have been doing, with China’s headstart over the rest of the BRIC/BASIC group placing it in a league of resource acquisition by itself), entire populations of supplier countries will face the consequences. Moreover, much of the material the two countries will commandeer will be directed towards their cities. China’s urban population is already 45% of its total population, while India’s is 30% and set to grow faster than it has at any period until now. There are combined numbers so large in the cities of China and India that the implications of the consumption by this grouping alone have become too profound to internalise for planners and administrators. Amongst the 300 most populous cities in the world, 97 are in China and these 97 are home to 243.98 million people (2010 estimate); 26 are in India and these 26 are home to 90.38 million people (2010 estimate).

In the state of Goa, western India, new residential blocks loom over shrinking fields. The produce from such fields once fed the capital city of Panaji, which now imports food 130 kilometres from the neighbouring state of Karnataka

What do we know about India’s food consumption patterns? Let’s look at some numbers to illustrate this. India’s most admirable National Sample Survey Organisation has just begun releasing summary data from its 2007-08 survey of household consumption (the earlier such ’round’, as it is called, pertained to the 2004-05 period). In rural India, average monthly per capita cereal consumption was around 10.3 kg for the poorest 10% of the population. (The survey distributes both rural and urban populations by ten ‘deciles’ – bands of 10% – which correspond to level of consumption expenditure.) It was between 11 and 12 kg for each of the next six decile classes, and was above 12 kg for the top three decile groups.

This means that for rural India, there is a strong positive correlation between ability to spend on food and quantum of consumption of cereals – the greater the household income, they more it is able to spend on staple foodgrain. In urban India, per capita cereal consumption increased from under 9.5 kg to about 10 kg per month over the first four decile classes but then showed a tendency to fall slightly rather than to rise in parallel with further increases in total expenditure.

This indicates the fulfilment of staple foodgrain needs and that expenditure on food thereafter is on cereal substitutes, processed food or eating out (what the surveys call ‘purchased cooked meals’), and fruit. Average cereal consumption per person per month was 11.7 kg in rural India and 9.7 in urban India. From this it would appear that the average urban person’s monthly cereal intake was about 2 kg less (a difference of 67 gm per day) than that of the average rural person. But it needs to be factored in that in urban areas the cereal content of processed foods and eating out (‘purchased cooked meals’) gets left out in the estimation of cereal consumption, which is why the difference in cereal consumption between the two may be less than it appears.

The FAO food price index plotted from 2000 to early 2010

India’s urban national average of per capita daily cereal consumption is 9.7 kg. At this average, we are able to gauge the cereal supply needs of cities with populations of over a million. Using population estimates for 2010 (from the City Mayors website database) we find:

Pimpri-Chinchwad (Maharashtra) with a metro population of 1.515 million consumes 483 tons of cereals a day
Nagpur (Maharashtra) with a metro population of 2.42 million consumes 772 tons of cereals a day
Varanasi (Bihar) with a metro population of 3.15 million consumes 1,005 tons of cereals a day
Ludhiana (Punjab) with a metro population of 4.40 million consumes 1,403 tons of cereals a day
Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) with a metro population of 6.29 million consumes 2,006 tons of cereals a day
Kolkata (West Bengal) with a metro population of 15.42 million consumes 4,918 tons of cereals a day
Mumbai (Maharashtra) with a metro population of 21.2 million consumes 6,761 tons of cereals a day

These daily consumption demands mean movement, by road and rail, of food produce citywards at prodigious scales. In Navi Mumbai, an urban satellite of Mumbai which is a fair-sized city by itself today, lies the food wholesale depot that marshals and redirects the daily procession of trucks, lorries, light commercial vehicles and pick-ups bringing food for Mumbai’s millions. The number of vehicular movements in this yard are reckoned to be over 2,000 every day which indicates the vast physical reach of the giant city’s food gathering subsystem, one that holds in its thrall a region that could comfortably encompass western Europe.

The Government of India has warned what it calls “sympathisers” of the Maoists / Naxalites in the country that they face action under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. The state’s warning that it can take such action simply means that the expectation of inquiry and dialogue into the causes underlying Maoist / Naxalite programmes is a misplaced one.

“It has come to the notice of the Government that some Maoist leaders have been directly contacting certain NGOs/intellectuals to propagate their ideology and persuade them to take steps as would provide support to the CPI (Maoist) ideology.

“It is brought to the notice of the general public that under Section 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, any person who commits the offence of supporting such a terrorist organization with inter alia intention to further the activities of such terrorist organizations would be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or with fine or with both. General public are informed to be extremely vigilant of the propaganda of CPI (Maoist) and not unwittingly become a victim of such propaganda.”

“This is being issued in public interest so that the general public are aware that the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and all its formations and front organizations are terrorist organizations whose sole aim is armed overthrow of the Indian State and that they have no place in India’s parliamentary democracy. CPI (Maoist) continues to kill innocent civilians including tribals in cold blood and destroy crucial infrastructure like roads, culverts, school buildings, gram panchayat buildings, etc. so as to prevent development from reaching these under-developed areas.”

The Times of India: “The dire warning, which marks a significant escalation and carries the risk of confrontation with influential rights activists, also represents a rebuff to the post-Dantewada clamour for a relook at the use of force against Naxals. This comes at a time when several such activists have been named in the FIR along with Kobad Ghandy for helping the alleged Naxalite leader in waging war against the state. A senior Delhi Police officer said there was ‘growing evidence’ that a section of the intelligentsia was helping the Naxal leaders flee states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal to set up base in colonies of east and south Delhi. ‘Besides this, these individuals are also helping various frontal organizations of the Maoists to raise funds,’ said the official.”

The Telegraph: “Human rights activists immediately saw in the warning a precursor to a large-scale countrywide crackdown on civil liberties outfits, writers, lawyers, academics and journalists. The move is exceptional in that such a public warning through a media note has probably never been made even against fundamentalist outfits.”
Lawyer Prashant Bhushan saw in the warning ‘a highly unusual step that clearly shows the intention of the government to try and browbeat and terrorise human rights activists and other intellectuals who have been questioning the motives and actions of the government in dealing with tribals and dissidents in the guise of an ant-Maoist drive’.”

Hindustan Times: “Civil society representatives raising voices in favour of Naxals may find themselves in legal tangles as the Home Ministry has warned of action against them under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.”

Indian Express: “Stating that it had noticed some Maoist leaders had been directly contacting certain NGOs and intellectuals to propagate their ideology and persuade them to take steps to provide support to the CPI(Maoist) ideology, the Centre on Thursday said anybody supporting Maoists would be liable for punishment under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.”

The Hindu: “The Centre has warned civil society groups, non-governmental organisations, intellectuals and the general public to refrain from supporting the CPI(Maoist) ideology as it will attract action under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.”

Activist Gautam Navlakha of the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) has said that the warning from the government harks back to the years of the Emergency. “In two months, it is going to be 35 years of the Emergency (imposed by Indira Gandhi from 1975-1977) and UPA-II [United Progressive Alliance] is de facto recreating the conditions of that period,” he said. “Instead of exploring more sensible and imaginative policies to deal with the Maoists and the tribals who live in the same zones where huge mining deals have been signed, the government is taking recourse to authoritarian and dictatorial measures,” he said.

“I am convinced that this is one rebellion which will test the resilience of the Indian state as never before. Precisely because it is a rebellion in which people are fighting to save their land, forests, water and minerals from being grabbed and they are convinced that they have an alternative vision.

“The Maoists are certainly not saints or sinners, but as mortals they show what an unflinching commitment to bringing about social transformation actually means and how far even limited resources can go to help people. Here was an alternative development model being put into practice by the Maoists in the course of which many aspects of social relations have been democratised quite significantly.” (‘Days and nights in the Maoist heartland’, April 17, 2010 vol xlv no 16, EPW.)

The first release of summary data from the 64th round of the National Sample Survey Organisation, ‘Household Consumer Expenditure in India 2007-08‘ (NSSO report 530), captures the early impact of the rising trend in food prices for rural and urban India. This period is significant in the recent history of food price rise in India, for it signals the strengthening of the factors that led to the retail food price highs of 2008 which began to be recorded around two years earlier. Several of the most important factors have to do with the rapid pace of urbanisation (most visible in the non-metro tier 1 cities) and the steady growth in the food processing and food logistics industries, which has taken place alongside the deepening of the agricultural commodity markets.

“To judge from survey data of food intakes, the situation has been getting worse rather than improving, at least in terms of per capita calories consumed, and this phenomenon is fairly widespread affecting all classes, rural and urban and those below and above the poverty threshold,” the FAO report, ‘World agriculture: towards 2030/2050‘ had stated in 2006 in its comment on India’s growth-malnutrition paradox. The report’s authors had at the time commented that matters in India “are getting worse in the rural areas as people have to pay more than before for things like fuel and other basic necessities of life” and that rural incomes have not improved at anything near the rates implied by the high overall economic growth rates.

To illustrate the continuing impact of rising cereal prices on rural households in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, district per capita incomes for 2004-05 to 2009-10 are estimated for five representative districts from these states. These are districts that record a median per capita income based on data for the 2004-05 year (the last NSSO household consumption survey year) available with the Planning Commission’s district domestic product tables: Bhabua in Bihar, Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh, Deoghar in Jharkhand, Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh and Jajpur in Orissa. The per capita income increases in these districts are recorded upto 2006-07, and taking the national GDP growth rate for the years following (9.7%, 9.2%, 6.7% and 7.2%) the overall finding is that statistical per capita income increases are between 36% (for Khandwa) and 47% (for Dhamtari) for the period 2005-06 to 2009-10.

Expenditure on food and non-food needs, Indian states

In these five states, the cereals basket occupies a dominant share of monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) on food, accounting for 42% of MPCE on food and 25% of total MPCE in Bihar, 41% and 21% in Chhattisgarh, 42% and 25% in Jharkhand, 33% and 17% in Madhya Pradesh, and 42% and 24% in Orissa. The impact of a steady upward trend in the prices of cereals in these states – whose rural households spend roughly the same on food as they do on non-food needs (see Chart 1) – can be gauged from retail price data on essential food items collected by the Department of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture. This data, although the most reliable weekly series recorded in a number of centres in the country, is weakened by deficiencies (gaps in series, numerical mismatches and so on). Even so, the patterns they provide are valuable.

From 2005 January to 2010 January, the prices of atta in Sehore and Bhopal (MP), of desi wheat in Bhopal and of maize in Patna have risen by 200%. The prices of ‘kalyan’ wheat (a widespread HYV cultivar) in Bhopal, Sehore and Patna (Bihar) have risen by 173% to 177%; the prices of maize in Ranchi (Jharkhand) and common quality rice in Bhubaneshwar (Orissa) have risen by 171%; the prices of ‘desi’ wheat in Patna and atta in Ranchi have risen 170%; and the prices of common rice in Cuttack and in Dhanbad (Jharkhand) have risen by 169% and 164%. Over this period, the price of the available basket of cereals has risen 157% in Cuttack, 162% in Bhubaneshwar, 159% in Sehore, 174% in Bhopal, 176% in Patna, 166% in Ranchi and 152% in Dhanbad.

Erratic data posting (and possibly validation difficulties) have meant that a better understanding of the food baskets of North-East India is yet to be achieved. Even so, NSSO 530 shows the heavy reliance by the households of the North-Eastern states on cereals (rice) with the regional average consumption greater than that of the states of eastern and central India in which rice also play a major dietary role: West Bengal, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand. What Chart 2 illustrates is that for those regional populations dependent on rice, the cost of this dependency is high.

Cereal consumption and prices, Indian states

This is not so for wheat in Punjab and Haryana, whose average per capita consumption quantity of the cereal is both relatively low (as a percentage of the cereal component of the food basket) and less expensive. For Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka – all three states affected by rapid urbanisation and absorbed by the race to build urban and transport infrastructure – their rural households are far less dependent on a single cereal than their counterparts in North-East, Eastern or North India. Wheat is the preferred cereal in Gujarat but accounts for no more than 40% of the total cereals purchase; rice is the preferred cereal in Karnataka but accounts for no more than 53% of the total cereals purchase; wheat is the preferred cereal in Maharashtra but accounts for no more than 36% of the total cereals purchase.

Food inflation is now a concern for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) which has begun to make direct causal links between per capita availability of foodgrains and high retail prices. Deepak Mohanty, executive director of RBI, in an address on ‘Inflation Dynamics in India: Issues and Concerns’ (March 2010) has also drawn a connection between food prices the minimum support price (MSP) announced by the Government of India for procurement of various commodities. “The high increase in MSP since 2007-08 has given an upward bias to agricultural prices. Reduced availability of foodgrains also tends to keep food prices high. As per the Economic Survey 2009-10, per capita net availability per day of cereals and pulses has been lower than that observed in the previous four decades. The per capita daily availability of foodgrains was 447 grams in the 1960s and 1970s, which successively increased to 459 grams in the 1980s and 478 grams in the 1990s but came down to 446 grams during 2000-08 and stood still lower at 436 grams in 2008.”

At the same time, the Government of India has approved proposals for joint ventures and foreign collaboration (including 100% FDI) in processed food businesses (including 100% export oriented units), and “mega food parks”. According to Indian Credit Rating Agency (ICRA), the processed food market accounts for 32% of the total food market with the “most promising” sub-sectors listed as soft-drink bottling, confectionery manufacture, fishing, aquaculture, grain-milling and grain-based products, meat and poultry processing, alcoholic beverages, milk processing, tomato paste, fast-food, ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, food processing, food additives and flavours. From the point of view of the major national industry associations (CII, FICCI, Assocham) the approximately 7,500 regulated mandis lack critical infrastructure, the provision of which will cost at least Rs 12,000 at 2009 prices. The potential of the public-private partnership model in the foods business is seen by industry as being embodied in ventures such as Safal market in Karnataka (considered an example of wholesale market modernisation), ITC’s e-Chaupal, Hariyali Kisan Bazaar, Mahindra Shubh Labh, Cargill Farmgate Business and Tata Kisan Sansar.

Removed from such a view are the recurrent protests since late 2009 in a number of urban centres over food inflation, urgent signals that the increasing corporatisation of food production, procurement, movement and distribution is contributing to household food insecurity, particularly amongst the rural and urban poor. The ‘Report on the State of Food Insecurity in Rural India‘ (M S Swaminathan Research Foundation) explicitly stated that “over the longer period of 1993-94 to 2004-05, the states of Karnataka, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh show significant increase in the percentage of population suffering acute calorie deprivation. On the whole, it is clear that, by our measure of food insecurity, the period of economic reforms and high GDP growth has not seen an improvement in food security but deterioration for the majority of Indian states.”